565 replies to this topic

[Pwnocchio]

CMetz, on 03 December 2013 - 01:39 PM, said:

Sometimes I find it almost vomit inducing to read the replies to these posts. The sense of self-entitlement around here is ridiculous. Allow me to touch upon a few things: 1.) YOU ARE PLAYING A FREE GAME.

<snip>

5.) Play the game that is available to you instead of complaining about the stuff you wish you had. If you don't like it, play another game.

Three points on this...

1. It's only a free game if you don't buy content. If you don't buy content there will be no game.

2. PGI asks for feedback. It's why they made this thread.

3. If you think PGI would rather all these complainers just quit and play World of Tank, then you are foolish.

[Solis Obscuri]

I think the thread is detailing a bit by the point where we are discussing the purpose of the thread more than the changes outlined in the roadmap.

Getting back on-topic, I would ask: If the engineers are currently working the back-end getting the servers ready for Community Warfare, are there any designers and programmers working the front-end content which users will directly interact with?

If not, I'm concerned that will cause further delays, and quite possibly rework loops on the back-end if difficulties are encountered (or new requirements needed) on the front-end.

[RamsoPanzer]

Hi, i just would like to ask, how mother nature needs less than 9 months to create a full functional baby while you take years to create a half functional UI.

[Deathlike]

xhrit, on 03 December 2013 - 08:10 PM, said:

This. The fact that someone thinks shooting a video is easier then writing a text file is a testiment to how misguided development on this project is.

How utterly clueless do you have to be to think developing a multimedia format is more efficient then a single media format?

I thought about this for a moment, and have come to the following conclusion.

You may have seen the "cool kids down the block" (hint: it's the game everyone seems to goto because PGI isn't doing a good job of entertaining them) and they have these nice dev videos that probably blow people's minds out because they are full of epic win.

Seeing as PGI believes they have "mastered" social media (twitter, facebook, reddit), they have decided to "show us their awesomeness" by copying going that same route.

Last I checked, watching Bryan in that mini-video not long ago actually depressed me. I don't mean the launch party, but the UI 2.0 (or something) that he was trying to show.

Edited by Deathlike, 03 December 2013 - 10:00 PM.

[Quinton]

well that was a disappointing update.

Community messaging: Perhaps you could explain how making a video response to player questions will take less time than just typing one out???

U.I. 2.0: your seriously planning on launching with lots of KNOWN bugs in it? Considering how this community generally reacts to game bugs, I would really have to question the sanity of whoever made that decision. And on the topic of User Interfaces, there isn't much of a game at the moment. There is a handful of maps, with some variants, a bunch of mechs, and 2 multiplayer modes... thats it, and you guys are focusing on revamping the interface?!?!? make it as pretty as you want, but an empty shell is still an empty shell.

Community Warfare: you just gave a detailed description that sounded like your almost at the midpoint of the development cycle of something that we were originally told OVER A YEAR AGO was going to come out by game launch, and would be the primary feature the community would revolve around. I would be curious to know how many of us beta testers are still anxiously waiting, also how long does the game hold new users, before the lack of content drives them away?

Gameplay: your first new game mode is going to be the exact same as a current game mode? in that case you could put in a second new game mode, call it domination.

Battlemechs: Here's a crazy idea. Instead of building modules to give players rewards for playing a role, make maps big and varied enough players can actually perform roles other than brawling, sniping, and missile boating.
Currently most maps are set up where a one-legged atlas can scout all the possible routes the enemy could be taking within seconds, information warfare starts and ends with ECM, and support is limited to mindlessly raining clouds of missiles down on the battlefield.

Clans: Game balance is going to take precedence over any values/behaviors found previously in other MechWarrior/BattleTech titles. seeing as how closely the inner sphere weapons stay to TT and/or other mechwarrior/battletech titles, I'm shocked that you felt the need to even mention this. Also, why are you even thinking about the clan invasion when there is no CW, very limited replay value, and combat hampering balancing issues still on the table?

Map Gameplay Elements: Re-balancing base/resource locations isn't a bad idea, though I am not a big fan of making every map perfectly balanced. That leads to all maps essentially being copies of each other, same thing, different planet. There should be a level of imbalance for different points in different areas, it gives maps character if you will, as opposed to generic vanilla blandness.
players entering combat sooner? So with one hand PGI giveth incentives to get players to play their designated roles and with the other hand PGI taketh away all roles except brawling by adjusting the maps so we all get to the brawl that much sooner. Thanks guys.

Player experience: oohh cockpit glass, yay! a bit more immersion to help balance out all of the other immersion shattering effects. Next time my cicada goes from 142 kph to 0 because of a 2 ft. high rock I'll be too busy ogling my new cockpit glass to even bother with the traumatic and near lethal whiplash I just suffered.

New Map: That looks pretty, then again you want us into combat sooner right? why not just build a 600m radius circle, flat interior, teams on opposite ends. That way we can get into combat 3 seconds after the starting bell! You dont even have to worry about pretty graphics or intricate buildings, we'll all be too busy with our latest alpha strike of the month mech, blazing away at each other.

TL:DR?
synopsis: Your patient has come into the emergency room with a severed arm, and you are focusing on his suspiciously low blood pressure. Oh, and offering him cosmetic surgery options.

P.S. I must apologize for the snark/sarcastic tone of this comment. I really want this game to succeed. I love the mechwarrior franchise, stomping about in giant robots is the best thing since sliced bread for me, and the graphics/art is awesome. I just can't help feeling that time and again major gameplay issues are being ignored in favor of window dressing and a singular focus on brawling. Also i've seen many posts of players offering really good ideas on how to deal with various things being totally ignored in favor of well, stuff like ghost heat.

[yashmack]

this is all good news but im still seriously disappointed with the development time... Im still baffled as to how this game is considered to be a "release" with all this content missing and still with buggy hit detection...

[MustrumRidcully]

Gauvan, on 03 December 2013 - 12:09 PM, said:

There have been a number of good posts concerning the switch from written answers to a video format. All I would add is that I believe a written answer allows you to respond in a more clear and thoughtful fashion. I don't think having folks speak extemporaneously on camera is going to do as good a job communicating to the community as written posts have. With proper pre and post production it can be effective but it sounds like a more quick and dirty approach is planned.

Apparantly, the devs feel differently about this. I never understood why.
Most games I am famiilar with that do communicate with the fans do a lot of it with written text, and it seems to work for them. Videos are an extra, and many fans are happy if they can just get the transcripts because videos take too long to watch compared to the content they deliver.

Now, if they actually plan to bring in a lot of visual **** - like showing off new maps, new game modes, new UI and new artwork, then video might be superior. We'll see. Literally* even...

*But not written literally.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 04 December 2013 - 01:11 AM.

[Koniving]

MustrumRidcully, on 04 December 2013 - 01:10 AM, said:

Apparantly, the devs feel differently about this. I never understood why.
Most games I am famiilar with that do communicate with the fans do a lot of it with written text, and it seems to work for them. Videos are an extra, and many fans are happy if they can just get the transcripts because videos take too long to watch compared to the content they deliver.

Now, if they actually plan to bring in a lot of visual **** - like showing off new maps, new game modes, new UI and new artwork, then video might be superior. We'll see. Literally* even...

*But not written literally.

I think they are taking a page from Star Citizen when it comes to this one.

Have you seen "The Wingman's Hangar"?
The issue I see with this, though, is that the main people we want to hear from (Paul, Bryan, etc.) generally do not have good 'public' personalities. They might have Garth, MiSs, or Niko play the faces here but then the answers are either teleprompter-fed (defeating the purpose of this) or not straight from the lead designers (which can easily lead to mistaken information).

[stjobe]

Koniving, on 04 December 2013 - 01:16 AM, said:

I think they are taking a page from Star Citizen when it comes to this one.

Which is, frankly, downright stupid.

If these videos were in addition to written material I wouldn't facepalm so hard, but replacing it? My nose is liable to start sticking out the back of my head from all the facepalming I've been doing lately.

[grayson marik]

Ahh with all this (mostly long known ) information and it's "feedback"... here are 10 points of why it is good to play ISW instead of waiting for CW:

1. ISW already exists for uh..10+ month's now
2. In ISW you control Systems, not anonymous borders
3. In ISW you may fight for planets - even as a house unit
4. In ISW, there is a strategic level included...Jump Ships, Drop ships,market place...
5. Mercs can already be contracted for anything from a simple raid up to planetary conquest
6. Your matches have a reason and a consequence... immediately
7. Drop restrictions are generated by the league for both teams. So no more crashing into 1200 tonns of Atlai unexpected
8. You may use the BT-Lore names for your units as well as self made ones
9. We already have Clans ( ok ok no clan mechs as we play MWT and MWO though)
10. You dont need to pay a dime ( not even a virtual one) to form up a unit

Edited by grayson marik, 04 December 2013 - 03:14 AM.

[Sharp Spikes]

Solis Obscuri, on 02 December 2013 - 08:05 PM, said:

If UI 2.0 is going to be released buggy, why wasn't it just released buggy back in Open Beta? Open Beta felt like a ten-month cycle of features being released &quot;finished&quot; without much regard to feedback, and now we seem to be moving back into beta testing.

That thing we have seen in public test in no way looks like it was developed for 1.5 years. By the looks of it they began the development of UI 2.0 in early autumn / late summer '2013.

[Ahasver]

Plaese do not use a Video Format for updating us.

What is so bad about typing something up? Is it to clear?


Not everybody can watch Videos all day.

[Ahasver]

grayson marik, on 04 December 2013 - 02:11 AM, said:

Ahh with all this (mostly long known ) information and it's "feedback"... here are 10 points of why it is good to play ISW instead of waiting for CW:

Just to let you know,
this was new to me, I visited the site.
The Webpage failes to inform in a short and dircet manner what all this is about and what I could expect from it.
At least I didn't find this anywhere and I would expect this on the start page.
Therefore I could not generate the motivation to read a load of unneeded information to find out iof this would be
something for my Gamersgroup.

[Joseph Mallan]

stjobe, on 04 December 2013 - 01:51 AM, said:

Which is, frankly, downright stupid.

If these videos were in addition to written material I wouldn't facepalm so hard, but replacing it? My nose is liable to start sticking out the back of my head from all the facepalming I've been doing lately.

Please take the time to post a Pic if you succeed in facepalming your nose out our ash! It would be good for a laugh.

Other than that, as usual, I agree with what you are saying.

[Jaeger Gonzo]

How about balancing clans by actually battle value, not by dumping down clans and going even more away of the BT lore. This is huge work already done and is ready to pick up, but offcourse you are way off of the source I gues to do it.
Even simply balancing per numbers would be better.
3 lances vs 2 stars, anyone? or maybe 4 lances vs 2 stars.

Yeah tons and numbers would be enough for balance,
offcourse bv would be perfect, but its too complex to ctrc ctrv, and put some changes in to xml i suppose.

Edited by Jaeger Gonzo, 04 December 2013 - 04:38 AM.

[Morang]

Deathlike, on 03 December 2013 - 08:53 AM, said:

IIRC, gravity is not a component to be altered yet, since it requires the server to handle the code just as well. Using also the same effects that MW2 had with low grav settings (like increased top speed) aren't doable yet either due to the speed cap/engine upgrade that has yet to actually be added in yet.

So, that's currently wishful thinking. Sorry.

Before they protected their files, limiting the amount of working console commands in user.cfg, I tinkered with gravity. There's a console command for gravity in Engine.pak (config/CVarGroups/physics). I was able to set negative gravity (so my mech - without any JJs - took off and flew up until out of bounds. Yes, maps also have a "ceiling", not only "walls") or reduce it, increasing the efficiency of JJs (I flew around a lot in Spider). It only worked in Testing Grounds, because they run on your PC without connection to MWO server.

In a combat drop server checks mech's position each second or half, and if the mech does impossible movements (in an environment set for this map on the server, i. e. normal gravity), the server returns a mech in the boundaries of possible movements. So with a negative gravity set in user.cfg a mech starts to take off but is dropped back on the ground after a second of flight. I don't know how other players perceive it, but I was unable to aim because of these jumps and speed also dropped to zero each time the mech took off, so I got no advantage, being a firepower and mobility kill right from the start. It was done during Beta for testing purposes.

It means that it is possible to make mechs move in low gravity using current engine (see my Testing Grounds experiment above). But while the settings for particular map can be altered on the server (I suppose so), I don't know if they can conflict with a single gravity value written in engine.pak. If it can be overriden as well client-side for particular map, then everything is OK. Otherwise, the opposite to my experiment will happen: airborne mechs will "try" to fall faster because of client-side default gravity, but the server will jerk them up each second, bringing their position in accordance with server-side low gravity setting.

Edited by Morang, 04 December 2013 - 04:45 AM.

[CMetz]

Have I only been a registered user for 2 months? Yes. Have I been following this game's development since the announcement that there "might" be another MW game years ago? YES. Have I spent money on this game? Yes, because I enjoy playing it, and I find it to be the best MechWarrior experience in existence by far. I've been playing tabletop Battletech since 1990 and I've got a copy of the original MechWarrior on floppy disk if you'd like to give that a go. Look, my opinion may not carry much (if any) weight around here. The problem is that all of the whiners and complainers think they are giving feedback when in reality they are providing mindless criticism without any constructive advice. Instead of wanting everything 5 minutes ago (and believe me, I'm as excited as anyone for CW and the Clan invasion), I think what we should be looking to do is provide the developers help in prioritizing the things we want. For instance, would the player base be willing to go 6 months without Clan tech if it meant CW was out in 2? Is our priority new maps or new game modes? Lets just assume that we can't have all of these things in the next 30 days. If we really want to help the developers make this into the game we all want, then we should be giving them feedback (not whining) in a constructive manner to facilitate that. Honestly, my preferences are CW before Clans, and new maps before new game modes. You opinion may differ, but it is our responsibility as the community to help the developers gain a consensus of our wants in a productive manner.

[Tekadept]

VERY unlikely that Community warfare will be out before clans, because clans = $$$

[stjobe]

CMetz, on 04 December 2013 - 04:42 AM, said:

it is our responsibility as the community to help the developers gain a consensus of our wants in a productive manner.

We try, but they genuinely don't seem to care what we think - and frankly they haven't since the whole "beta burnout" hullabaloo towards the end of closed beta. Remember, us forum goers are neither the core audience or even a minority worth listening to - I'll dig up the dev quotes for those statements if you don't believe me when I say that's straight from the horse's mouth.

So we've tried reason, we've tried maths, logic, illustrations, graphs, pleading, we've tried shouting at the tops of our metaphorical lungs, and nothing. What's left but ridicule and scorn? I have no problem understanding why some see no other way to get through to the devs, even if I personally try to stay a more reasoned course (if only because I believe that there is a slightly larger chance - even if it's still close to zero - that that will be read by someone and perhaps passed on to the devs).

PGI is just a disaster when it comes to communication and community interaction. They promise the world and deliver a pebble - a late and feature-incomplete, buggy pebble at that.

And that would be okay if the core of the game wasn't as good as it is; then one could just walk away. But the core game is a gem, it's genuinely fun to stomp around in my 'mechs and duke it out with 23 other people. For a while, before the feeling sinks in that there is nothing else; all the words that have been spoken, promises been made about Community Warfare, Role Warfare, E-War, game modes and the likes mean nothing when it's just words.

Like the young man from Memphis, Tennessee might have said:
A little less conversation, a little more action, please
All this aggravation ain't satisfactionin' me
A little more bite, a little less bark
A little less fight and a little more spark
Shut your mouth and open up your heart, now PGI satisfy me

It's way past the time when they need to start to deliver on their promises.

[xhrit]

stjobe, on 04 December 2013 - 05:09 AM, said:

Like the young man from Memphis, Tennessee might have said:
A little less conversation, a little more action, please
All this aggravation ain't satisfactionin' me
A little more bite, a little less bark
A little less fight and a little more spark
Shut your mouth and open up your heart, now PGI satisfy me

lol.